Commentary on the 2006 Environmental Assessment for "Refinements"
to the World Trade Center Memorial and Redevelopment Plan

The latest "Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact
and Determination of Non-Significance" is just another milestone of
narrow-minded incompetence in the tragicomically wretched official
planning process for rebuilding the destroyed World Trade Center.

It merits only another "Finding of No Significant Improvement" by the
tinkerings the Assessment attempts to excuse.

The notice sent out by Stefan Pryor on the day he left for another job
baldly claims "Implementation of the Approved Plan began with the
formal groundbreaking for Freedom Tower on July 4,2004." Of course all
that happened that day was the laying of one stone at an obsolete
location from which it has been removed.

The rest of the document,as has been the hallmark of the official
planning process from inception,engages in similar hoodwinking and
self-congratulation over the horrifically inappropriate "Proposed
Action" of the FGEIS that became an "Approved Plan" only by the
action of those who had proposed it...not by submission of the
proposal to someone else with the power to demand better.And the
public's attempts to demand better have been systematically ignored
for years.

This document is just the latest of many demonstrations of the
catastrophic consequences of allowing the organization long aptly
nicknamed the "Leave Manhattan Destroyed Committee" to act as
both proponent of plans and regulator of those plans.The crying need
for an outside authority to force the products of this incompetent
process to be abandoned immediately remains unmet.
One message stands out crystal clear to everyone except the
plan's promoters:

"End it,Don't Amend it!!"

No amount of tinkering can turn the current plan into something
worth building;no plan that meets the indefensible programmatic
requirements that plan was commissioned to meet can be something
worth building;no plan that seeks to fulfill the inappropriate
priorities that gave rise to those requirements can be something
worth building.

There is no use in officialdom shifting the blame for those requirements
to public opinion;public dissatisfaction with the proposals put forward
by the official planners has been a constant throughout the process.
We must never forget that in the official public poll the Libeskind plan
finished last,and "Neither" (of the two "finalist" plans bad enough
to meet the official requirements) was the clear winner,indicating public
dislike for the guidelines that gave rise to those plans.

As just one example,the current document defends removal of the oil/water
separation filter at the proposed intersection of Fulton and Greenwich
Streets...given the unanimous opposition to Greenwich Street being
extended through the World Trade Center site when the Project for Public
Spaces opened a comment board on the subject,why should there even be
such an intersection?What is so precious about the potential to drive
truck bombs down the new streets close by each one of the proposed
structures...and discrediting all claims of resilience by ensuring
that no new office towers can even be on the same block as the old?

A plan that deliberately erases the identity of the World Trade
Center site by carving it into blocks no longer distinct from
the surrounding neighborhood,that ostentatiously showcases the permanent
power of the murderers of thousands to prevent us from ever rising again,
that dares not reclaim the full height of the destroyed iconic Twin Towers,
can not be turned into a good plan,or even a tolerable one,by
amendment.

You can not build a viable plan based on the "Findings of the FGEIS"
which readers of that document know are as a rule highly flawed.
The FGEIS failed spectacularly to defend the General Project Plan's
overwhelming inferiority to the unfairly caricatured Restoration
Alternative,the ideal rendition of which alternative should always
have been the entire mission of the redevelopment planning process.

Mr. Pryor has claimed there is no reason to revisit the erroneous
decisions made in this planning process when in fact there was and is
no reason to revisit the decisions made in the 1960s in planning the
original complex,such as removing the archaic street grid and creating
a site with a distinct identity...the only revisions that need to be
made are in updating the engineering of undiminished Towers.

"End it,Don't Amend it!!"

When you are going downward,the only way upward is to go backward.

The only plans worthy of the site are ones that do not fail
in the way that the official plans have been ordered to fail.

We need plans that honor the distinct character of the Financial
District,not seek to transform the area into yet another of the
city's countless "24/7 communities" and encourage the already
overheated pace of population growth.

We need plans that honor the distinctness of the World Trade Center
site itself,retaining its clear definition among the surrounding
areas rather than opportunistically dividing the "superblock" because
of changing fashions and taking the needed de-vehicularization of
lower Manhattan a giant step backwards.

And most of all,we need plans that are centered on gigantic Towers
that show no retreat in the face of mass murder,no
retreat from the spirit that gave us the originals,and create
the only historical and urban context that can make a memorial
on the site honor the victims more than it honors the killers.

The turning of resolutely deaf ears to the public clamor for
restoration of what was destroyed must end.

Let us instead turn deaf ears to those who plead real estate
economics,remembering that it was strictly through having the
courage to ignore short-term demand that the greatest buildings
of New York achieved iconic stature.They became exceptional
exactly because they were "too big"...and in the end made more
money than they possibly could have otherwise!

Let us instead turn deaf ears to those who plead fear,recognizing
that to show the success of the killers in inspiring such fear
encourages them to strike again,and that the engineering facts
make clear that supertall buildings are necessarily the safest.

Let us instead turn deaf ears to those who see the murder of thousands
as a lucky chance to impose their tastes in urban design on a site that
met the tastes of others,and reject both their insensitivity and the
symbolism of being made to change our course by those who would kill
us.

Let us see with open eyes the importance of not allowing this site
to change more than can be avoided,and the empowerment of mass
murderers that any such changes represent.

Let us show that the spirit that gave us the Twin Towers did not
die and can not die,rather than build a tomb for it amid stunted
symbols of surrender.

Let us build awe-inspiring engineering marvels that reincarnate
that spirit for the new millennium on a scale greater than before
and alone can show that the killers did not "cut
us down to size".All the sacrifices made by our forces abroad
are revealed as empty bluster if in the end all that rises again are
smaller buildings angled in fear away from empty holes where the
symbols of our pride once stood.

We didn't shrink from fully rebuilding the Pentagon stronger than ever,
New York must show it is made of no less substance than the countless
cities that have rebuilt their wounded hearts fully after devastation
by war or disaster.

I have said all this and more before,and will say it again at
every opportunity;these truths do not change.

I can only close by repeating what I have said previously when confronted
with attempts to "amend" the Libeskind plan:

The case for complete abandonment of the current plans in favor
of ones much more evocative of what was destroyed in the
attacks of September 11th 2001 has never been clearer.